Music Plagiarism
Music Plagiarism is the use or close imitation of another author's music while representing it as one's own original work. Plagiarism occurs in two types: a musical idea which comes from the author's mind, and sampling that is a copy-paste formula. See also The Cover Art Controversy, where artists plagiarize cartoon characters for their album covers. Overview Any music that follows rules of a musical scale is limited by the ability to use a small number of notes. All forms of music includes patterns. For these reasons, accidental plagiarism is possible. As well, some artists abandon the stigma of plagiarism altogether. Plagiarism occurs even before the introduction of copyright, and crediting of songs are not common at the time. Songs that enter the public domain are vulnerable to mass plagiarism, as the original owners cannot renew their copyright status. Most of these songs affected by plagiarism are folklore songs. According to U.S. copyright law, in the absence of a confession, musicians who accuse others of stealing their work must prove "access", the alleged plagiarizer must have heard the song, and "similarity", the songs must share unique musical components, though it is difficult to come to a definition of what is "similarity". Notable Examples # Ohio disc jockey Lynn Tolliver, claims that his song "I Need a Freak" was sampled by The Black Eyed Peas without his permission in their song My Humps. # The drop of Nik Makino's "Neneng B" contains the same beat from Roko Tensei's Relax. # Aphex Twin knew that Kanye West plagiarized his song "Avril 14th" on a rare interview on Pitchfork # Marvin Gaye's children sued Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams for plagiarizing Marvin Gaye's song "Got to Give Up" for their song Blurred Lines. # Guitarist Joe Satriani filed a copyright infringement suit in Los Angeles federal court against Coldplay, claiming the song "Viva la Vida" includes the tune of Satriani's song "If I Could Fly". # Nirvana's "Come As You Are" rips off Killing Joke's "Eighties", which in turn also rips off The Damned's "Life Goes On". The guitar riffs from these songs are all similar. # Lady Gaga garnered much controversy, alleging that her song "Born This Way" has strong similarities to "Express Yourself" by Madonna and especially "When Love Takes Over" by David Guetta featuring Kelly Rowland. # Parts of the Elecman stage theme from the video game Megaman contains the melody from Journey's "Faithfully". No lawsuit has been filed to the songwriter or Capcom. # The guitar riffs from Bryan Pringle's "Take a Dive" was used in a Black Eyed Peas' song "I Gotta Feeling". # The chorus of I'm Too Sexy by Right Said Fred was used for Taylor Swift's song Look What You Made Me Do. # The theme song of the movie Ghostbusters by Ray Parker Jr. was sued by Huey Lewis alleging that he stole the melody of his song "I Want A New Drug". At that time, Lewis was supposed to compose the main theme song of Ghostbusters, but declined to work for Back to the Future soundtrack. # Almost any songs by Jincheng Zhang as he copies free music from the YouTube Music Library as his music in his song and he claims that he created the instrumental part of the music itself which he did not. # The drop of Brandon Beal's "Twerk It Like Miley" contains the same beat from the Brood War Terran theme from StarCraft. The similarities between the songs are very small. Proof: https://youtu.be/PLE57UZievU?t=47%7C1 https://youtu.be/wHjuJaqk_DU?t=64%7C2 # "Ice Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice sampled "Under Pressure" by Queen and David Bowie without permission. Those two artists were later awarded most of the song's royalties. Ice's remix of Wild Cherry's "Play That Funky Music" also failed to credit Wild Cherry frontman Rob Parissi as the songwriter. Parissi was later awarded $500,000. # ”Flexing Ice” by MC Icy ripped Lil Flexer’s 2019 Flex Gang Freestyle and was passed off as a song by Lil Flexer. Eventually, the song was removed from music services and MC Icy released an apology video. Proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o-1nq-0394 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUQneT2WxqU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSQyMaH8H_E # "Siq with a Q" by Blood On The Dance Floor stole from two tracks by deadmau5: "Faxing Berlin" and "Hey Baby". # Submarine Man's ripoff tracks credit himself (Water Handblast) as the sole songwriter on BMI and other rights societies, without acknowledging the original authors. # Like Submarine Man, Lil Meerkat makes rips offs of popular rap songs and does not credit the original authors of the songs (with the exception of Bohemian Rhapsody). #Canadian rapper Drake stole the flow of American rapper XXXTENTACION for his song KMT and refused to acknowledge that he took the flow from his song "Look At Me". # The Beach Boys' "Surfin' U.S.A." ripped off Chuck Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen". Berry is now credited as the song's sole composer. # Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman John Fogerty was sued by Fantasy Records, which claimed his solo track "The Old Man Down the Road" plagiarized his own band's song "Run Through the Jungle". In court, Fogerty played both songs on his guitar to point out the differences. The judge ruled in his favor. # George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord/Isn't It A Pity" ripped off The Chiffon's "He's So Fine". Harrison claimed that he used the melody from the public domain hymn "Oh Happy Day". Harrison had to pay $1.6 million to the Bright Tunes publisher. # 2 Live Crew was sued by Acuff/Rose Publishing for their parody of Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman". The Supreme Court ruled in favor of 2 Live Crew, saying their parody was considered fair use. # Radiohead stole the melody of the Hollies' "The Air That I Breathe" on their breakout hit "Creep". # Belgian songwriter Salvatore Acquaviva sued Madonna because her song "Frozen" ripped off the melody for his composition "Ma vie fout le camp". As a result, "Frozen" was banned in Belgium. # "Bitter Sweet Symphony" by The Verve was successfully sued by ABKCO Music for heavily sampling Andrew Loog Oldham's version of The Rolling Stones' track "The Last Time". ABKCO and Rolling Stones members Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were awarded all of the song's royalties. In May 2019, Verve frontman Richard Ashcroft earned back the publishing royalties to the song. # Led Zeppelin has been accused of plagiarism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Led_Zeppelin_songs_written_or_inspired_by_others multiple times. # Oasis were sued for plagiarism several times, such as using the Coca-Cola jingle "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" on their track "Shakermaker", and "Step Out" copying the riff of Stevie Wonder's "Uptight (Everything's Alright)". # Several other hit singles added the original songwriters as co-writers, such as "Stay With Me" by Sam Smith ("I Won't Back Down" by Tom Petty), and "Shape of You" by Ed Sheeran ("No Scrubs" by TLC). # The intro to "Cool World" by Mondo Rock rips off the intro to "Just What I Needed" by The Cars. # "Independent Women" by Destiny's Child sounds very similar to "On the Border" by Al Stewart. # Logan Paul was sued by rap-rock group Flobots for plagirizing their song "Handlebars" in his track "No Handlebars". # Katy Perry was unfortunately and successfully sued by Christian rapper Flame for ripping off his song "Joyful Noise" on her track "Dark Horse". Pery has planned on appealing the ruling. # In 2019, nu metal band Flaw fired guitarist Tommy Gibbons for plagiarizing tracks off of YouTube. Lead singer Chris Volz stated he was unaware of the plagiarism. # Green Day's "21 Guns" has a similar verse to Scott McKenzie's "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers In Your Hair)" and a similar chorus to Mott the Hoople's "All the Young Dudes". The band added David Bowie and John Phillips as songwriters. # Lizzo was accused of plagiarism twice. CeCe Peniston said the "yeah yeah" ad lib on "Juice" was similar to her hit single "Finally", while producer Justin Raisen accused "Truth Hurts" of stealing the line "just took a DNA test, turns out I’m 100 percent that bitch" from an unreleased demo he made with Lizzo. # Pop punk band Yellowcard sued Juice WRLD for $15 million for claiming that his song "Lucid Dreams" copied melodic elements from their song "Holly Wood Died". # Puddle of Mudd's "She Hates Me" is essentially a ripoff of Suicidal Tendencies' "I Saw Your Mommy". # Gloria Estefan's "Wepa" rips off the melody from the theme song of the obscure cartoon Wally Gator. Miscredited songs # Several unreleased Ariana Grande songs appeared on Spotify, credited to "Zandhr". # Several Tool songs appeared on Spotify credited to "Pool Band", "Thomas V. Warren", and "The Tool". # Two Taylor Swift songs appeared online credited to the wrong artist: "I Knew You Were Trouble" was credited to the band Lostprophets, with [[The Cover Art Controversy|a screenshot of Scaredy Squirrel]] as the single cover. "Bad Blood" was credited to Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins. # Speaking of Lostprophets, someone put the actual recording of One Direction's "Drag Me Down" on LP's "Greatest Hits" album, which has [[The Cover Art Controversy|a picture of Sparky from The Fairly OddParents]] on one band member's head. # In 2013, four albums by "Vender" were released, with the master recordings of popular songs (such as P!nk, Bruno Mars, and Basshunter) credited to Vender. # Several Beyoncé songs appeared under the guise of "Queen Carter". # The actual recording of Paper Lace's 1974 hit "The Night Chicago Died" is credited to 80's pop group Pretty Poison. Category:Awful Moments in Music History Category:Rip-offs